


Whitewashed

by TheTartWitch



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Comatose Nico, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Praying By A Bedside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4869416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico's in a coma, Will wants to say goodbye. But then they both wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whitewashed

**Author's Note:**

> This is like, one of the shortest things I've ever written. Um. So...

It starts when you open your eyes. It's cold, and black, and empty, and just as you've begun to close them again in despair a light appears, way off to your left. You blink and watch it for a minute, waiting for it to disappear. It doesn't.

You turn your head fully towards it and panic for a split second when it winks at you. A giggle sounds, echoing around you, and you open your mouth to retort but instead feel a sticky, slimy substance coating your tongue. You gag and spit, but it won't leave and eventually you have to swallow. You don't reopen your mouth.

(0)

The light has blinked out finally, but now there are voices: laughter, sobbing, a droning voice that discusses the weather with someone named Joanna. Then there's _that_ voice. You don't know why, but whenever it talks you sit up and stare into the darkness, begging the owner to come into sight. They don't; you don't think they can even hear you.

Sometimes it doesn't talk, and just sits in silence, as though waiting for some great event. You wonder what it's waiting for. You hope whatever it is comes.

There's usually more silence than speech, though. You don't care; you just breathe it in.

(0)

Sometimes you imagine you can remember things from before the black: faces, feelings, disjointed thoughts and emotions. You imagine yourself larger than life, raising a sword to a sky jagged with lightening. You imagine you can smell the ozone. It tingles in your nose.

You imagine a boy with silver streaks in his hair, a girl with sister streaks running through her ponytail, a gilded mirror framing a boy with obsidian eyes and coal hair, a blonde man smiling at you through a curtain of rain, and you wonder if any of this is even real. Does that man exist? Does his smile really look like that if he does? Where is the line between imaginary and real? How can you tell?

And sometimes it's all a big blur; faces run together to make something monstrous and snarling, voices blend and mix to make sentences, inflections, that don't make sense. Eyes that flow from blue to stormy sea green to a stormcloud grey to a kaleidoscope of purple-ish blue, bruising behind your eyelids and giving you a headache.

Sleep doesn't come easily, and none of your dreams make any sense. It's both sad and scary that when you reach for it, your name is gone. Your age eludes you. Even what you look like is beyond your grasp.

Are you even alive?

(0)

A man comes to see you, in the dark. He's cranky and upset, but as soon as he sees you (or whatever of you is left in the dark; you can't tell if anything was there to begin with) his expression softens. “Just one favor; just this once, Bright One, and then nothing at all, ever again.” You pull your lips back in what approximates as a smile and his face cracks.

His hand reaches out to you, spreading light with a wave, and it spreads like water, filling the cracks and ruptures in your mind and illuminating everything slowly. You blink, eyelids suddenly _there_ , eye _here_ , face _solid and real_. Your fingertips touch your chin and you hiccup because _you exist and nothing will ever be the same_. You stare at him. He brought the light back. You owe him everything because he showed you yourself. You ought to follow him back to where that light comes from, where that voice speaks and laughs and calls your name (the name you can never hear but you know they say it so sadly and wistfully it aches).

But is any of it real? What if it was all just your mind playing tricks on you to make the dark less lonely, the loneliness less oppressing? This place was a cage, and you would have lost your mind without that voice to sing songs from outside the birdcage. What if you leave and the voice is real and they don't want you back?

You'd be empty.

He is still there, watching you. His hand is still extended. “Come,” he says, and you step forward once. The questions rush you and you exhale and fight through them. “Come back to him, Little Death. He loves you.”

Stars burst behind your eyelids, slotting names to faces and dialogue to conversations.

_Will, I love you._

_Will, please don't leave me._

_Will, it's dark._

_I'm sorry. So sorry._

_Will, don't be lonely without me, will you?_

_Find someone who loves you._

And you open your eyes.

(0)

You gaze down at him, brushing hair from his eyes and begging them to open. His name is fond on your lips and you say it. “Nico. Nico, please don't leave me. Please come home to me.” The last words are a sob as you watch Morpheus phase out of Nico's head and back onto the tiled floor. His eyes are grave as he stares at you.

“I can't promise he'll remember you completely. His brain did a number on itself while he was trapped and he had the creepiest mindscape I've seen in a while, but he might wake up.” And then he leaves you alone.

You'd begged your father for one last chance. One last time, one last goodbye where he could _hear_ you this time. If he was dying anyway, you didn't want him to have to be alone, even if it was different for children of Hades. Your father had sent Morpheus, grumbling about old debts and _move aside while I get a good look at the boy._

And now it’s over. He wakes up or he doesn’t.

His eyelashes flutter; his nose twitches. His eyes open for just a moment and he sniffles, like he’s going to start crying. “Nico,” you say. You don’t want him to cry. “Nico, come home. Come back.”

His eyes pin you down, absorb you. You hold your breath.

“Will,” he says, and you only realize then that you’ve been crying all over him. “I knew you were real.” You smile and wipe his hair out of his eyes and try to remember your own name; you’ve spent so long praying with his.

It’s good to be home again, you think. It’s… nice, to know that home is beside you once again.

(0)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write Percy Jackson fics, but my friend is really into reading them (even if he doesn't like slash) so I figured I'd write him something for his birthday. Hope you liked it.


End file.
